In Answer to the Question of "Why?"
by Flame Tigress
Summary: In exile, Voldemort ponders the answer to the question of why he committed all his horrendous crimes. It's both more complex and much simpler than one might think...


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Disclaimer: Voldemort, Harry Potter, Dumbledore, etc. are not mine. They were created by the great and powerful Oz – I mean, J.K. Rowling.

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Author's Note: Wheeeee! Fun disturbing thoughts I had while running in P.E. (why there? To take my mind off running, of course). Once again, using my sarcastic/cynical/ironic/bitter Tom Riddle/Voldemort voice. I think I'll have it trademarked…

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In Answer to the Question of "Why?"

In my considerable time of exile – in Albania, of all places – I admit to spending most of my time plotting my murder of Harry Potter and that old fool and Mudblood-lover Albus Dumbledore. I even began _fantasizing_ about the delicious moment of triumph when those two all-important killings sealed my dominance over the entire European wizarding world. Yes, I used to be human; I retain some of the shameful habits, fantasizing included.

Of course, I would give my enemies a final chance to speak their last words before I finished them off with _my_ favorite two words – those being, of course, _Avada Kedavra. _That led to the question someone, no doubt, would ask: Why did I commit all these dreadful acts of terrorism?

Who would ask? I pondered. Would it be Dumbledore, my Transfiguration teacher, who suspected me from the beginning, and whom, it is said, I – even at the height of my power, when I was the invincible Dark Lord before whom all the world cowered in terror – feared? Would it be some trembling student at Hogwarts whose family members were among my victims? Perhaps Harry Potter himself, the only Boy Who Lived when I decided to kill him, my embarrassingly young archenemy.

I would need an eloquent answer for the benefit of history, which is, of course, written by the victor – namely, me. So I fantasized (that embarrassing human habit again) about the answer I would give to that question: Why?

After much deliberation within myself, I discovered that for all my ramblings, ranting, fantasizing, and tirades; for all my cruel amusement and bitter sarcasm; for the life, death, and somewhere in between of me – I don't know.

There is of course the answer that the informed yet naïve would assume to be true – that my father abandoned my mother before I was born. Yes, she did sacrifice her fortune and her rank in the wizarding world to marry him, handsome, charming, selfish Tom Riddle – so much like me, when I was younger – and he betrayed her love and courage when he found out that she was a witch. Some would think that I killed to avenge her abandonment and mine, and her death before I could know her. A sort of Sweeney Todd story it is – the man who was wrongly imprisoned, his wife raped, and his daughter abducted by a corrupt judge, so he exacted a twisted revenge on the English justice system by killing the aristocrats who came as customers to his barber's chair. Are the flash of my wand and my _"Avada Kedavra"_ the stroke of his razor across their soft, lily-white throats? Is it justice for myself, too late, I seek to mete out when I murder?

Others, innocent, pitying, naïve, would think that my cruelty stems from the abuse I received at the orphanage at which I grew up before the letter from Hogwarts arrived, an angel on white-feathered wings to salvage my sanity…too late, for my beatings taught me no morals, and I grew up an unredeemable sociopath.

And the theory of yet different wizards is that all my evil deeds set up a shield around me that I erected as protection from the horrors of my past – that, determined never again to be the victim, I set out to be the abuser, the soul-killer, the murderer. They say that it was fear, not anger or moral depravity, that spurred my heartless actions; that my name – Voldemort – truly means 'flight _from_ death'; that I evaded death and dealt it like the Fates, like dark Nemesis, from the terror of the wrongs I had known.

"Know thine enemy" is the advice that warriors are given. I know mine very well. I know everything they think of me; I laugh, I brood, I scorn, I consider.

Is it the memories of the wrongs done me that caused me to kill, to maim, to torture, to tear apart lives? you ask, Harry Potter.

What, then, if I did it all merely because I am a power-hungry maniac who enjoys causing pain and murdering? What then, Harry Potter?


End file.
